Under the Internet closed captioning requirements established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), after certain triggering deadlines, video programming shown on television with captions in the United States and distributed in full-length form over Internet Protocol (IP) must be provided with captions online.  Beginning on September 30, 2013, the IP closed captioning requirements will apply to prerecorded programming that is edited for Internet distribution.

Programming is considered “edited for Internet distribution” if the television version is substantially edited prior to its Internet distribution.  This is the last scheduled deadline for captioning of non-archival programming placed online.  The first scheduled programming for archival programming will become effective on March 30, 2014.   For a full list of the key deadlines under the FCC’s IP closed captioning rules, please see our earlier post.